Page 10 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Saundyl’s pulse jumped against Lykor’s fingers.

“I broke into the king’s dungeons,” Lykor hissed, leaning close. “Walked out with those left to rot.”

He ripped open a portal to Asharyn. On the other side waited a courtyard full of freed prisoners, wounded families, and faces Saundyl might know.

“Let’s see how badly you want to keep them breathing.”

He flung Saundyl into the rift.

“Drain the rest,” he growled to Vesryn.

Whether the prince had the spine to obey was his own problem now.

Lykor cast the plundered talents through the void. Every stolen weapon would arm their own.

Saundyl would talk.

And if he didn’t, Lykor would teach him what silence cost.

CHAPTER 2

SERENNA

Serenna’s breath rasped in her ears as sunlight blazed across the Coliseum. Her limbs jerked with the aftershock of her storm, lightning still wreathing her fists. Fenn’s fire clung to her arms in molten ribbons, their braided power shuddering through her with nowhere left to go.

Ayla, queen of Alari, had dragged them to the arena for spectacle. She’d staked Fenn in the sand as bait, then sent ten noble-sponsored children with shaman power in their veins to fight Serenna while the capital’s elite packed the white stone tiers and screamed for blood.

Serenna had tried to spare the children. For as long as she could, she’d turned aside every element they hurled at her and Fenn.

But Ayla had watched from above with Serenna’s stolen Starshard glittering at her throat, waiting to make Fenn pay for every life Serenna refused to take. If Serenna had kept holding back, her sister would’ve twisted her magic against him next.

Serenna’s choice still smoked through the arena.

All that remained was the reek of copper and char, the crowd still screaming above it all, drunk on slaughter.

Serenna dropped beside Fenn, a golden collar locked at his throat, its twin cold against her own. Silver stakes speared his wings, pinning his body against the sand. His eyes cracked open, unfocused, then flared when they found her.

She reached for him.

Steel-gloved hands seized her first. Enforcers. Dozens of them, closing around the carnage like scavengers.

The children…

Wind swept through the arena, and Serenna’s gaze snagged on a white flash through the dust. A ribcage fused with blackened earth. A hand with finger bones still outstretched.

Serenna flinched away, bile scorching hot on her tongue.

Don’t look. Don’t think.

The soldiers yanked her upright.

But she wasn’t done. Not after Ayla had left Fenn bleeding, sent children to finish him, and waited until Serenna chose who lived.

Skylash’s spark thrashed in her chest, wild beneath the tethering restraint of gold. Lightning cracked into her palms as she twisted against the enforcers’ grip, desperate to strike every hand dragging her from Fenn.

Before Serenna could hurl the lightning, the Starshard at Ayla’s throat flared high above.

A brutal yank hooked through Serenna’s ribs, wrenching the charge from her control. A scream tore through her teeth as the storm died in her palms.